This is my mother Leya Bogdanova. The picture was taken in Moscow in 1950.
My mother didn't work after she got married. She helped Father the way she could. She was also a homemaker, who nurtured the children and created a hearth.
When I hear 'Jewish mother,' I associate it with my mother. She was a true Jewish mother, who lived for her children and kept them in her heart and soul. My parents were religious. We observed all Jewish traditions at home.
Though my parents used to wear secular clothes.They didn’t want to look frumpish. My mother covered her head with kerchief when she went outside. She had beautiful think long hair, and I didn’t like the idea of concealing her gorgeous hair.
My parents were evacuated to Sverdlovsk during World War II. After the war they returned to Moscow. Both of my parents were retired at that time. My parents still stuck to Jewish traditions and remained religious.
My family and I marked religious holidays with my parents at home. I always spoke to my parents in Yiddish. Even now when I come to the cemetery, I speak Yiddish to them.
Mother died on 4th July 1954. She was buried in the Perlovsk Jewish cemetery in Moscow. The funeral was according to the Jewish rite. Now as I am even older than my mother was when she died, I take many things differently.
There is no way I could overvalue my mother being a mother, a wife and a grandmother. How hard her life was…. Our entire family was centered on her. I remember mother's wrinkly hands with nodulous knuckles.
How could Mother manage to do the laundry, cooking and at the same time find a warm word of comfort for everybody? Even at war, when it was very fearsome and hard, I thought of my mother at moments that seemed to be the last and it was comforting.
